


What Use Is This Magic, If I Can't Save Her?

by smolqueernerds



Category: The Ever Afters Series - Shelby Bach
Genre: ALL OF IT, F/F, all the bad gay angst, messed up formatting everywhere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-08
Updated: 2016-03-08
Packaged: 2018-05-25 10:43:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6191947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smolqueernerds/pseuds/smolqueernerds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Solange will do anything to save Millie from her sleeping curse, no matter how much she has to sacrifice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Use Is This Magic, If I Can't Save Her?

Solange is loving this battle.  
All right, so that’s a completely inappropriate sentiment, but she doesn’t care one ounce. How many long range combats does she get to be involved in? Practically none, that’s how many, which is especially irritating when you consider her favorite weapon (and the only one she’s more than passably competent with) is the throwing star, which is incredibly difficult and dangerous-in-the-wrong-way to use at close range. She’s used to sitting back and feeling useless while Sebastian and Millie handle the combat, but right now Millie’s busy slicing arrows out of the air with her sword --- helpful for defense, but not much else --- and Sebastian, well. Sebastian will never be fighting again.  
Solange would rather not remember that right now, though. She needs this battle, she needs to feel useful, she needs the grim satisfaction that’s humming through her bones as she hears the witches shrieking curses and dropping their bows like they’ve turned to scalding iron, watches their eyes rolling back in their head and their knees giving out as her stars slice into their wrists and shoulders and throats, blood welling forth. She needs something to fight, she needs to stand back to back with her best friend and take down anyone who stands against them and ignore the fact that the word friend should be pluralized, pretending there’s not a gaping hole in her life that opened up the second Arica’s magic hit Sebastian and the grey started creeping over his skin.  
She knows it’s bad, how good this makes her feel, and on most days that guilt swallows her pleasure, or at least dims it. But today, she gives in to the buzzing in her blood as she ducks and dodges and twists and throws, and as she slices one witch’s bowstring in half, a laugh bubbles up in her throat and she lets it come.  
She’s still laughing when Millie falls.  
There are only two witches left standing, and she takes them both out but when she turns to Millie, looking for praise, she’s lying on her side in the grass.  
Solange feels inordinately calm as she drops to her knees and begins searching for a wound. Her inspection yields nothing but one long, narrow gash on Millie’s left forearm, which should most definitely not have incapacitated her, and she’s at a loss until she sees an arrow lying beside her. Granted, the ground is littered with arrows, but most of them have been sliced in two by Millie’s blade. This one remains intact, and besides, there’s something different about the tip. Unlike the rest of the arrows, its tip is made of black stone, not wood, and there’s a strange wet sheen along the edge.  
Solange picks up the arrow, focusing on the tip. She brings it to her nose and inhales. Blood. This is the one that hit her.  
Millie is breathing deeply and regularly, lips parted, eyes closed. Her pulse, when Solange checks, is steady. She doesn’t look wounded or in pain at all, just…  
Asleep.  
Of course. It was, after all, a witch’s arrow. It’s a wonder more of them weren’t cursed, really. Thank god the solution to this one is so simple.  
After taking a moment to throw the cursed arrow as far away as she can, Solange leans down and gently takes Millie’s face in her hands. Despite the circumstances, she feels a slight thrill at the thought of kissing her awake. After all, this will be irrefutable proof that she’s Millie’s true love (not that she’s ever doubted it, but still, irrefutable proof is always nice). Besides, she likes having a chance to rescue Millie every once in awhile.  
Taking a deep breath, Solange presses her lips to Millie’s and draws back, waiting for her eyes to flutter open.  
Nothing.  
Maybe there’s some sort of time limit. She starts counting, marking the seconds by tapping the inside of her wrist. At twenty, she gets impatient and leans down again. This time, she tries to make it more tender and meaningful, closing her eyes and thinking I love you, I need you, please wake up and smile at me again.  
Nothing happens.  
Solange shakes Millie’s shoulders, splashes her face with cold water from a nearby stream, whistles into her ears, tickles her, pinches her, even slaps her once. She kisses her again and again and again, harder and faster and more desperate each time, and doesn’t realize that she’s crying until tears trickle off her chin and land on Millie’s cheeks. Come on come on come on wake up this isn’t funny just come back to me  
This can’t be happening. The solution to a sleeping curse is always true love’s kiss - she’d know why if she paid better attention in magic lessons but she’s fairly certain it has something to do with the Last Mage’s curse. This is impossible.  
Solange leans back, reaching to steady herself on her palms, when a sharp pain shoots through her right hand. She lets out a yelp before bringing it around for inspection. Something’s embedded in her palm. A thorn?  
Bringing her hand to her mouth, she manages to extract the offending object with her teeth, grimacing and spitting out the welling blood. It’s fully half an inch long, pale green, and thick around as her middle finger. What kind of flower grows thorns like this?  
When Solange looks back, she sees roses forcing their way out of the ground.  
These are no ordinary roses. They are growing unnaturally fast, petals unfurling from a bud the second they enter open air, leaves and thorns springing from the stems moments afterward. New ones are popping from the dirt every second. Their colors are too vibrant, their leaves strangely shaped. These are the kind of roses that only come from magic.  
When she looks the other way, she sees roses emerging beyond Millie’s head and to both sides, forming a rough circle. The one she speared her hand on is now fully a foot high and its growth shows no sign of stopping. This is strong magic - the kind that comes from Tales.  
Witches, roses, a sleeping curse. Sleeping Beauty.  
Which doesn’t explain at all why her kiss isn’t working.  
Maybe it’s because they’re both women. It would be stupid, monumentally stupid, but it would make a sort of sense, the magic not recognizing her for that. It’s the best explanation Solange can think of, and the roses are rising, and she has to go or she’ll be trapped here. The Tale will keep Millie safe while she’s away.  
“I’ll come back,” she whispers fiercely to Millie, choking back tears of fury. “I’ll come back for you and I’ll make it recognize me and I’ll wake you up, I promise.”  
There is no time for any better goodbyes, so she shoulders her supply pack, gets a running start and leaps clear over the roses. She feels something snag on her skirts and another few somethings graze her calves, hears ripping and feels blood start to trickle down her legs, but she comes down on the other side and runs. She runs, pack bouncing painfully on her shoulders, skirts flapping ridiculously, heart thudding, eyes stinging.  
I’ll come back for you.  
But in the meantime, one task is left. She has a king to kill.

 

After the king is finished off, her Tale is declared over, and she’s handed a golden apple and a place in the Canon, Solange knows that she can’t wait a hundred years for Millie. Well, it would be theoretically possible - she’s functionally immortal now, frozen in time, but the thought of decades without her isn’t worth contemplating. Not to mention that that would mean someone else waking her up, and that isn’t going to happen. Millie is her other half, and the Tale cannot deny her this. So Solange reads books on magical theory until her eyes are swimming and makes clandestine inquiries here and there until she’s hatched a plan.  
“Let me guess,” the witch says, looking her up and down. “Somebody broke your heart… and now you’re looking for a poetic death. You sure you want this? There are quicker ways. Less painful, too. Trust me, sweetheart, this kind of thing isn’t worth it.”  
Solange takes a leaf from her aristocratic mother’s book and looks down her nose at the woman, despite the fact that they’re almost exactly the same height. “I’m not paying you to question me.”  
The witch leans back against the cave wall. “You’re not paying me at all, yet.”  
“The coins are in my pocket. You can get them out after you’ve done the job.”  
For a second, Solange thinks the witch is going to try and jump her, or use one of those quicker ways she mentioned, which would be unfortunate; it took a month of frequenting shady magical hangouts to set up this meeting, and she really doesn’t want to go through it again. Fortunately, the woman just shrugs and walks over to her, long braids swinging. “Lie down.”  
Solange obeys, closing her eyes, and the witch kneels over her to begin working.  
It hurts, of course, but not as much as she thought it might, and it doesn’t take too long. Really, it’s not even as bad as losing her toes to frostbite was. But then, she hadn’t been making the decision that time.  
When she feels the skin on her chest knit back together, she holds still for a few moments to make sure it’s over with, then opens her eyes to see the witch standing over her, cradling her bloody still-beating heart between two hands.  
“I’ll take that,” Solange says, climbing to her feet. “Thank you so much.”  
The witch drops the heart in shock. Luckily, Solange is in position to reach out and catch the pulsing lump of flesh. A little shiver of disgust runs through her, but she maintains her hold.  
It takes the witch several seconds to find her tongue as she stares disbelievingly at Solange, but her first sentence is “Why aren’t you DEAD?!”  
“I don’t see how that’s relevant.” Solange turns on her heel and heads for the cave entrance, tossing a “Nice doing business with you” over her shoulder on the way.  
“Wait, wait, WAIT!” The witch chases her, coming around to plant herself firmly in Solange’s path. “What about my money?” She sticks out a gnarled, warty hand.  
“Oh, forgot to mention that.” Solange takes a second to reach down inside herself and find the “well of power” (as her instructor always called it) she’s had ever since she first gained sorcery. It’s always been more of a shallow pond than a well per se, but now? Now, it feels like an ocean. A shiver of pleasure runs down her spine. “See, when I said you could get the money when you were done, what I really meant was that you could get it if you could take it. So, good luck with that.”  
This time, the witch charges her. She gets two steps before an icicle materializes and spears her through the throat.  
Tucking her heart under her arm (her dress is already a wreck, what difference will a little blood make?), Solange takes her final steps out of the cave. She takes a moment to turn back and observe it; an unassuming cavern, worn into the side of a small mountain by time and nature.  
Granted, the icicle might have been enough. Soon it will melt, leaving no trace of a murder weapon for anyone who comes to investigate. But with the notorious vengefulness of witch clans, it’s better to pull out all the stops.  
Solange raises a hand, and the mountain crumbles. 

Two days later, she stands outside a dome of roses.  
Millie’s Tale has woven an elaborate structure of flowers around her resting place, stems reaching for the sky and twining together to form a protectively arching ceiling. It’s quite lovely, despite the wickedly sharp thorns jutting outwards from every inch of the surface, and in any other circumstance she might feel a tiny bit bad about destroying what is undeniably a work of art. But at this moment, she doesn’t feel the tiniest bit bad about causing a large patch of roses to shrivel up and wilt on the spot, leaves and petals browning, thorns shrinking to nothing. Perhaps, given time to think it over, she would have chosen a more stylish method of entry, but she’s waited too long for this and she’s not wasting one more second on the nonessentials.  
Solange walks through the dying roses and sees her.  
She hasn’t aged a day, of course. In addition, the magic of the Tale has somehow ensured that she’s arranged as attractively as possible; glowing cheeks and sweeping lashes, hair and skirts fanning out artfully around her, an expression of sweet vacant bliss. Solange can’t think of anything beautiful enough to compare her to, but this contrivedly flawless Millie pales in comparison to the one she remembers - the real one, bossy and nagging and preachy and stubborn and clever and funny and gorgeous and imperfectly perfect. The hole where her heart used to be aches with all the missing she’s stored up over the months, and before Solange knows what she’s doing she’s rushing to Millie’s side and leaning down over her, whispering “Millie, Millie, Millie” like a prayer, and she’s smiling for the first time in months because this is almost perfect. Millie’s the first Sleeping Beauty in decades; when she wakes up, they’ll have to induct her into the Canon. It can be just the two of them forever, and with Solange’s new power, nobody will dare to tell them what they can and can’t do - including loving each other. Yes, they can make themselves a paradise.  
This time, when she kisses her, Solange reaches for the power inside her and pushes it outward, as much as she possibly can. She sends it into Millie, into the roses, even into the ground and the air, until every inch of her surroundings is charged with magic. The hairs on her arms stand up.  
Wake up, Solange commands mentally, pressing her lips to Millie’s. I am your true love. Wake up. She pictures it firmly, clearly; Millie’s eyes fluttering open, her lips parting in wonder, a look of ecstatic recognition dawning on her face. The roses bowing out of their way as the two of them walk out of here hand in hand, smiling at each other, lost in joy. Wake up. Your true love is here to rescue you. Wake---  
Something shatters. Solange is suddenly sprawling on the ground; her head is throbbing, her ears aching, and her mouth tastes like copper. When she pushes herself up, black spots are swarming in her vision, but she can see clearly enough to tell that Millie is lying in the middle of the clearing. There is no change in her peaceful demeanor; her slumber remains uninterrupted. The magic hasn’t made the slightest dent in the sleeping spell.  
There is nothing left for Solange to try. She wants to scream and curse until her throat is raw, to rampage and break things and slit throats (maybe even her own), but her muscles are too weak. All that the world’s most powerful sorceress can do now is curl into a ball in the grass and sob like a baby as it dawns on her that she is alone now, so very alone.


End file.
